It’s MapLight’s Seventh Anniversary! Thank you!

February 29, 2012

It's Our Seventh Anniversary!

We invite you to indulge us as we press the rewind button and travel back seven years to the founding of our organization. There we see a younger, less gray, political activist, MapLight co-founder, Daniel Newman, setting up shop in a rented spare bedroom to build a giant database (a.k.a. data mashup) that would reveal the influence of money behind a wide range of issues affecting the lives of ordinary people. Little did he know then that he would be named a Gov 2.0 Hero and one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business, and that the result of his vision, Web Mashup Turns Citizens Into Washington's Newest Watchdogs, would be used by journalists to reach over 90 million people worldwide--amplifying the message that money's role in politics corrupts the legislative process. Here are a few highlights from the past seven years, told through media headlines we received.

On behalf of our small but impactful team we would like to sincerely thank our co-founders Jaleh Bisharat, Thomas Layton, and early MapLight champion, Greg Gretsch, for their commitment and dedication to our work. Also, without the support of our foundations and individual donors, and the advice and counsel of our board of directors, advisory board, and you, our loyal followers, the work we do would not be possible. Thank you.

Being the new research organization on the block in 2005, we benefited greatly from our data partners, the Center for Responsive Politics, the National Institute of Money in State Politics, and GovTrack, who had already established credible relationships with many media outlets. However, the word data mashup (a tech word that means, simply, a combination of databases) was used early on to describe MapLight and raised several journalist's eyebrows, prompting them to ask us to carefully sift through spreadsheet after spreadsheet of campaign finance and legislative data, and deliver document after document of evidence of a company or organization's public support of or opposition to bills. Once we earned the trust of reporters, (for example, as David Pogue of the New York Times put it: "Nobody has ever revealed the relationship between money given and votes cast to quite such a startling effect,") they began Following the Money Trail Online and showed the intersection between money and politics and how compaign contributions can influence legislator votes.

In 2009 we successfully settled our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the state of California, winning public access to the state’s database of legislative votes and as John Diaz eloquently points out in Opening the Windows to the State Capitol, "It should not take a lawsuit to open the windows into the legislative activity within the state Capitol. These are the people we elect, operating with the money we provide them, to perform the people's business."

Last year we launched our Wisconsin website, giving citizens a front row seat to the Wisconsin State Legislature. Just recently we launched our Company Pages, Shining a MapLight on Corporate Political Influence, prompting Susan Reisinger to write "The non-partisan research group MapLight launched an online project that is sure to catch the eye of many a general counsel." Our Topics pages are set for a public launch next week.

"We have a corrupt system where government is responsive to the donors and not to the citizens.... companies and rich individuals can buy the politicians they want into office." Daniel Newman on Al Jazeera

We need your help, now more than ever to Change the World With a Click of the Mouse by continuing to use MapLight's database to expose the economy of influence in DC, California and Wisconsin, and to hold legislators accountable at every turn when big moneyed interests attempt to Buy Votes and access to our government. It will take all of us, the left, right, and center, to fix our money-dominated system and make our democracy work. We invite you to join us in our fight to put our Representative Government back into the hands of its rightful owners: you, your children, and all the people that make up this great country.

Thank you for everything you've done to help shine a light on money and politics over the last seven years. We know that working together with you, the best is yet to come.